Category Archives: Shaman

This post’s MS Paint was done on a laptop with just the trackpad, so they’re even “better” then usual. Enjoy!

Playing an Enhancement Shaman
There isn’t all that much that changes in this particular level range from the 1-29 range. You’re still primarily a melee DPS class that weaves spells in between your attacks. But, you do start to get a better feel for how the class is going to play at max level as you finally get access to some of your really key features such as dropping all four totems with a single cast, actually having access to all four totems in the first place, and the ability to resurrect yourself.

As Enhancement, you’ll still have a very hybrid combat style where you weave melee and spells into a deadly mixture of ferocity, and the higher you get in level the more apparent that becomes. You don’t quite hit the premium level of that mixture in this level range, but you’re getting closer.

Enhancement-Specific Tips
The biggest suggestion I have for this bracket is directed at those of you who have played Enhancement in the past and are now leveling new ones or trying to get back into the class/spec after a long time away from it – do not use dual Windfury Weapon buffs. I loved rocking dual WF back in the day and seeing those swirly black tornados of doom popping left and right, but you’re gimping your own DPS if you do it. Also, don’t think you can get away with using spell caster weapons or fast weapons either, that’s all been nerfed.

Windfury Main Hand – Flametongue Off Hand

Otherwise, it’s pretty much business as usual compared to the last guide. The main difference is that Windfury is going to drastically increase how fast you kill things. This is where you’ll really be able to appreciate the greatness that is instant-Ghost Wolf, and where you’ll start to develop a closer relationship with your totems as casting them all is much easier as is removing them all and restoring mana in the process.

Important Spells & Abilities
Note that all numeric values are taken from the level 49 version of the spell for the purposes of this post.

Level 30-39

Ancestral Recall (30): Yanks the caster through the twisting nether back to their Hearthstone Location. Speak to an Innkeeper in a different place to change your home location.

Reincarnation (30): Allows you to resurrect yourself upon death with 20% health and mana. [Reagent: Ankh]

Totemic Recall (30): Returns your totems to the earth, giving you 25% of the mana required to cast each totem destroyed by Totemic Recall.

Windfury Totem (30): Summons a Windfury Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the melee and ranged attack speed of all party and raid members within 40 yards by 10%. Lasts 5 min.

Magma Totem (36): Summons a Magma Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for (21 sec) sec that causes Fire damage to creatures within 8 yards every 2 seconds.

Grounding Totem (38): Summons a Grounding Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that will redirect one harmful spell cast on a nearby party member to itself, destroying the totem. Will not redirect area of effect spells. Lasts 45 sec.

Ancestral Recall was one of my favorite things about the Shaman when I first started playing; back when your hearthstone had a one hour cooldown. It’s still useful, but with the cooldown on your hearth lowered to 30 minutes, or 15 with the guild perk that most people have by now, it’s not quite as good as it used to be. But, it’s still a really useful spell if you’re doing a lot of travel (anyone doing Archeology out there?).

Call of the Elements and Totemic Recall are the both spells I would have killed for back in the day when I leveled my first shaman. Being able to drop all four totems (or fewer if you wish) with a single click/cast is a fantastic upgrade from the multiple GCD’s it would have taken you before. Totemic Recall destroys all of your existing totems and gives you a portion of their mana cost back when you do. The main benefit of this spell, as Enhancement, is to clear your totems from an area where they might draw some accidental agro.

Reincarnation is one of the signature abilities of the Shaman, allowing you to resurrect yourself when you die. If you’ve ever played a Warlock it works more or less the same as a Soul Stone, except that you can’t cast it on anyone else and you don’t have to cast it on yourself beforehand as you can cast it anytime you die as long as it’s not on cooldown.

Windfury Totem gives you melee haste, and it’s your best default Air totem with its duration and general benefit. In dungeons it’s going to be a great help when you have melee or hunters in your group. Magma Totem is your AoE totem of choice as it deals AoE damage itself as well as allowing you to cast your Fire Nova through it. If you have several mobs around you, go ahead and drop the Magma Totem, but remember that Searing Totem will give you more damage for single targets, especially as you get higher in level.

Windfury Weapon is THE reason why I love the Shaman class and the Enhancement spec. Windfury Weapon procs cause you to get three free, instant attacks on your target. I like to call the “swirly black tornado of DOOM” because that’s what it looks like, and that’s what it is. If you have a decent weapon for your level then Windfury procs generally mean that your target is dead, even if they were at full health.

Lava Burst isn’t really associated with being Enhancement, but I want to mention it anyway for its auto-crit property. You won’t often end up in situations where casting spells trumps melee, but for those rare instances where you end up rooted/snared or that your target is fleeing, this can be a really great option. You’ll be in the habit of having Flame Shock on all of your targets anyway, so this one’s basically a free ranged crit on demand. Since I’m mentioning PvP in my leveling posts now as well, this is especially worth mentioning even if it’s not something you’re casting in every battle.

Grounding Totem is another great spell that further increases the Shaman’s varied tool set. It’s often dismissed as a PvP totem, for which it is fantastic (and is getting buffed, though the cooldown is getting nerfed), but it does have some solid usefulness in PvE as well. You’ll find more spell casters in dungeons than in just questing, but any time you’re up against casters you might as well utilize your get-out-of-target-free card.

Another one of my favorite spells for the Shaman is Far Sight, which many players simply dismiss. For PvE, yeah, it’s about half a step above worthless. But, it’s still both fun and useful. It’s biggest benefit is PvP, where you can scout areas at range. In Arathi Basin I like to defend the Mine while casting Far Sight on the top of the Blacksmith which gives me a clear view of the entire map, including Lumber Mill. In Warsong Gulch you can spy on the enemy base from the safety of your own (you need to be on the “outside” section between the tunnel and the roof to do this from “inside” the bases).

I love casting Far Sight in PvE to hunt rare spawns. The great thing about Far Sight is that you cast it on any area that you can see on your screen, but you can recast it to any point that you can see from the place you’re already looking at with Far Sight, so you can chain cast this to look at the entire continent. You can also use it to hunt vanity pets from raptor nests such as the Ravasaur Hatchling, Leaping Hatchling, and Darting Hatchling.

Level 40-49
It’s important to note that at level 40 you also gain the ability (finally) to wear Mail armor, and you’ll want to upgrade your gear as soon as possible as not only do you get more armor from Mail, but you’re also about to enter the level range where you get a buff to your primary stat (Agility) only if you’re wearing your class’s particular armor type in all slots, which happens to be Mail for Shamans.

Call of the Ancestors (40): Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar. Can call different totems than Call of the Elements.

Mana Spring Totem (42): Summons a Mana Spring Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min that restores 326 mana every 5 seconds to all party and raid members within 40 yards.

Wrath of Air Totem (44): Summons a Wrath of Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem provides 5% spell haste to all party and raid members within 40 yards. Lasts 5 min.

Call of the Ancestors is the same thing as Call of the Elements at level 30, except that it allows you to set a different group of the totems so you can work with the tools you need in any situation without a lot of time spent juggling them around. You’ll end up with four of these all together and that’s basically what they’re for. I like having one set up for general questing and dungeons and another for PvP.

As I’ve said before, mana isn’t a big deal for Enhancement, but Mana Spring Totem is worth mentioning because your totems are great buffs for your party and mana is one of the major obstacles for people to deal with in dungeon settings. This is my default Water Totem for that very reason. Wrath of Air Totem I mention for the same reason I do Mana Spring; you aren’t a caster but you’ll definitely end up with at least one in any dungeon or battleground that you go to.

There are a few other spells you get in this range as well, and while they are useful they aren’t that great for Enhancement. Chain Heal is the biggest potential exception there, but it’s not as good at this level as it will be in another 20 levels when you can cast it instantly.

While Windfury Weapon is fantastic, it has an internal cooldown on it that will make your off hand weapon occasionally rob you of procs on your main hand which will result in decreased DPS. At level 62 I lost roughly 220 DPS using dual Windfury Weapon, and I didn’t even have all the talents that make Flametongue Weapon really shine for the off hand.

[EDIT: I had Primal Strike listed in the rotations instead of Stormstrike. Primal Strike is worthless once you have Stormstrike, so remove it from your bars and forget that it exists. The two share a cooldown, and Stormstrike out performs Primal Strike in every way.]

Questing Single Mob (no change from the 29 Guide)
In this rotation you’re just going to destroy targets as fast as possible. If you’re using heirloom weapons then I definitely suggest you stick to using Earth Shock as your go-to shock spell, but if you’re not using heirlooms then you might find Flame Shock to be a better option for the opening cast as it’s DoT damage will add up over time to be even more than Earth Shock. Any shocks you cast after the first one should be Earth Shocks though, unless you missed with the Flame Shock cast.

Questing Multi-Mob
Now that you can drop all four of your totems with a single cast I suggest you drop them as you rush into combat instead of planting them in advance as it just saves time. You can plant them ahead of time if you’d like, I just prefer doing it on the move. If the group of mobs you’re going to fight are close together, go ahead and pull them with a Chain Lightning, otherwise just stick to the rotation.

The point here is primarily to get Flame Shock cast on all of your targets so that they’re all taking damage, and then speeding up their deaths with your melee attacks. Light one up, bash them in the face a time or two, switch targets and repeat. Windfury procs will speed up your multi-mob combat speed a lot when it procs.

If you need to heal in these situations, go ahead and do so. If you find yourself running short on mana because you’re healing go ahead and switch over to Water Shield for the mana return and switch back to Lightning Shield when your health and mana are at a more manageable level.

LFG Trash
This one is the same as solo questing, except that sometimes you might want to bother with totems and others you might not. I don’t cast my totems by default at this level when I’m doing LFG, instead I wait to see how quickly we’re progressing through the instance. If we’re moving at a fast pace then I usually don’t bother with any of them until we see a boss. If we’re going kind of slow or we have people who are /afk or something, then I’ll go ahead and drop the totems to increase everyone’s performance.

For most trash pulls though, just stick to Earth Shocks and using your melee strikes as often as possible.

Wind Shear: Deserves a special mention here though. Shamans have crazy-good spell interruption capabilities thanks to Wind Shear. If you see a mob casting spells, particularly a healer, interrupt as many of their spells as possible. If you’re in instances with caster mobs who are especially annoying then be sure to make use of Wind Shear when they’re casting the spell you don’t want to go through.

During boss fights you can also use this to lower your Threat as you can cast it even if there’s not a spell to interrupt. With Windfury procs, each extra attack can generate a critical hit which can send your threat through the roof. With such a short cooldown and the fact that it can be cast regardless of the GCD, there’s really no reason for you not to use it.

LFG Boss
For bosses you want to maximize your DPS potential. That means that you’re going to make sure Flame Shock stays active on the boss as long as possible, and that you’re going to utilize your totems for the good of your group.

Using Searing Totem will give you a higher, personal DPS score on a boss fight, but if you have at least one caster DPS in your group then you should probably lean towards Flametongue as both they and the healer will benefit from it as will you (though to a lesser extent). If there are no caster DPS in the group then switch your Fire totem over to Searing and drop it right next to the boss when you move into melee range. Mana Spring is the choice for Water as your mini heals from the other won’t help nearly as much. Windfury is your default Air, but if your other two DPS are both casters then go for Wrath of Air instead since Haste really isn’t your top priority anyway.

Once Flame Shock is dealing its damage you’ll start rotating through your melee attacks and casting Earth Shock as filler while you wait to refresh Flame Shock. If you time your shocks just right you can get two Earth Shocks off with almost perfect timing for your shocks to refresh just as Flame Shock ends, allowing you to reapply it immediately with no time lost.

Wind Shear will still work on many boss abilities at low levels, so be ready to use it when you get the chance as Shamans have a fairly flexible and laid back rotation at this point. Spells you want to interrupt in particular are healing spells and AoE damage spells such as Chain Lightning. I could go into specifics, but this is a class guide, not a boss guide, so just use your own judgment. Remember that Wind Shear also lowers your threat, which can be a big deal now that you have Windfury Weapon on your main hand and can generate some very high burst threat.

Talent Spec: 49 Enhancement Shaman

Static Shock 3/3: When you use your Primal Strike, Stormstrike, or Lava Lash abilities while having Lightning Shield active, you have a 45% chance to deal damage equal to a Lightning Shield orb without consuming a charge.

Elemental Devastation 1/3: When you deal critical damage with a non-periodic spell, your chance to get a critical strike with melee attacks increases by 3% for 10 sec.

Searing Flames 3/3: Causes the Searing Bolts from your Searing Totem to have a 100% chance to set their targets aflame, dealing damage equal to the Searing Bolt’s impact damage over 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Elemental Devastation +2 (3/3): When you deal critical damage with a non-periodic spell, your chance to get a critical strike with melee attacks increases by 9% for 10 sec.

Unleashed Rage 1/2:
Increases your expertise by 4, and increases all party and raid members’ attack power by 5% while within 100 yards of the Shaman.

Honorable Mention:Frozen Power 2/2: Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash, and Shock spells by 10% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect, and your Frost Shock has a 100% chance to root the target in ice for 5 sec. when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.

Static Shock is first on my list because I like to have more consistent DPS increases rather than relying on something like crit chance. While there’s only a 45% chance to proc the talent, that’s still much more consistent than a bit of crit chance. That being said, I do like Elemental Devastation for additional crit on my melee attacks when I crit with spells. With the Shaman’s hybrid melee/caster play style you’ll deal with a lot of opportunities to get this to proc. I suggest splitting the points you spend it though, because of this next talent.

Searing Flames is the reason why your Flame totem of choice is Searing Totem. It causes the totem to turn into a stacking DoT debuff. While level 49 opens you up to another key class/spec ability (Shamanistic Rage), I don’t feel that this one in particular needs to be rushed into as survivability is typically a non-issue while leveling and you don’t really have enough high-cost spells to need the mana benefits of it just yet. Instead I suggest you increase our DPS through Unleashed Rage as it not only gives you 5% more attack power (10% once you spend the other point in it), but it also reduces your chance to be avoided. Not only that, but it gives that benefit to your whole party/raid.

The Honorable Mention is a talent that I spent points in instead of topping off Elemental Devastation right away. It’s usually considered a PvP talent since it freezes people in place and gives extra buffs when using Frostbrand Weapon (the PvP imbue), but I really enjoy using it in PvE as well. I use it often when gathering to freeze mobs that would otherwise stop me from gathering, I use it to stop runners (though I could use a totem for that), and of course I do love using it in PvP as well. I like having types of control in my tool set for any class that I play, and this talent fits very well into my play style.

With Lava Lash being a staple attack and the fact that you get it at level 10, this is my first choice of Prime Glyphs, increasing its damage by 20%. Next up is Stormstrike as the bonus crit can be useful with how many spells you cast in combat. Finally I have Flame Shock listed though it’s important to note that it’s really only useful in LFG boss fights or in PvP as typical mobs and dungeon trash will not live long enough for even the normal duration to matter.

Lightning Shield is overall going to be the most useful glyph for you here; it’s how you turn your Lightning Shield into a solid 10 minute buff instead of lasting only for three hits worth. Ghost Wolf is my next choice because moving faster is always a good thing, both in PvE and PvP. Frost Shock deserves a mention for those of you interested in getting into some low level PvP, though I would generally always suggest Ghost Wolf above this one for that purpose.

Fire Nova is probably the best investment if you’re looking to beef up your AoE ability in dungeons by increasing its radius and taking away the hassle of replanting your totems. Chain Lightning is one I haven’t used myself, but it deserves a mention for AoE if you enjoy it.

I’m a huge fan of getting rid of reagents, so Water Walking is the definite first choice here. We have a few more options that do the same thing for spells that opened in this range, with Water Breathing and Renewed Life. Of the three, you’ll cast Water Walking more often (I do, at least), but Renewed Life is probably more valuable overall. The other cool option is Ancestral Recall, which cuts the cooldown in half. It’s not super useful in today’s short hearthstone world, but if you need to do a lot of back and forth travel (*cough*archeology*cough*) then it can be really useful. Arctic Wolf is a simple vanity glyph that just changes the way you look in Ghost Wolf form.

Gearing Up Your Shaman
As Enhancement your primary stat is Agility. Each point gives you 2 Attack Power and it also boosts your Melee Crit (and Dodge). Intellect boosts your Spell Power on a 1:1 ratio, and it also increases your Spell Crit and your mana. Strength is a decent stat for you as it still gives a 1:1 ratio for Attack Power, but it’s not something you really want to seek out unless you just cannot find any Agility pieces at all for those slots.

You also want to look for gear with Hit on it in particular since you take a penalty to melee hits for dual wielding. You don’t need a ton of Hit to get you by while you’re leveling, but if you find some good Agility pieces that also have Hit on them then be sure to pick them up.

For green gear with random enchants you’re probably most interested in “..of the Falcon” (Agility and Intellect), “..of the Tiger” (Agility and Strength), and “..of the Monkey” (Agility and Stamina).

As you get into running random dungeons you’re looking for items with the “..of Agility” and “..of the Bandit” (Agility, Stamina, and Crit) enchant on them from the Satchel of Helpful Goods.

There are two ways you can look at gearing up your low level Shaman. You can either go for maximum killing potential, which is stacking Agility above all else, or you can go with a more balanced build where you look for gear with both Agility and Stamina. I prefer maximizing my damage potential, personally, and going for good survival pieces in slots that I have no Agility piece to fill in. If you’re not used to healing on the fly as a DPS spec though, you might want to lean more towards survival.

Dungeon Gear
I got some good feedback from putting the dungeon drop list in the last post, so here’s one for this level range as well. Again, I’m not going to go into detail as far as which pieces to pair up from which dungeons to get a “best in slot” list, but I will give you a list of the items that if they dropped for me, I would consider rolling on if they were an upgrade to what I currently had.

A lot of the “good” lower level gear is tuned more towards Strength, which is still good though it’s not great. Agility is where it’s at, so don’t pass up an Agility piece for a Strength piece unless the value is at least twice that of the Agility piece.

Also remember that while Leather is still really good gear for you, you should try to upgrade all of your armor slots to Mail as soon as possible from level 40 on.

The Ebon Vise gloves drop from a rare spawn. Ironspine’s Eye also comes from a rare spawn, as does his Fist and Ribcage. Ironspine’s Fist isn’t the best weapon for us, as it’s a little bit fast, but at least it has both Agility and Hit. The Gloves of the Pure are a quest reward.

I mention the Hand of Righteousness only because if you don’t have access to heirlooms then despite the fact that the bonus stats on it kind of suck for your spec, the damage and speed on it aren’t too bad. While it’s definitely more of a caster weapon, if nobody needs it and it’s an upgrade for you, go ahead and take it.

The Grasps of the Insane and Band of Grandiose Illusions are both quest rewards from the same quest.

The Ferine Leggings may be leather, but they have great stats on them. The Tusken Helm and Pronged Reaver are particularly great drops, assuming you don’t have heirlooms to fill those slots instead.

The Monkey Ring, and the items below it, are all quest rewards. The Ring is from one quest, the rest from another. Again, some are listed just as upgrades to slots that you might be struggling with, not necessarily because they’re “great” items.

Uldaman is kind of cool in that a lot of the boss drops have random enchants. At the same time, it sucks for that very same reason. You’re looking for enchants with Agility or Attack Power, Intellect isn’t too bad, nor is Strength. Galgann’s Firehammer is a great weapon if you don’t have heirlooms; it’s just a big faster than optimum, but the damage proc can add up fast with Windfury Weapon procs as all four attacks can proc the extra damage.

The following items are Horde-only because the “bosses” they drop from are friendly to Alliance toons: Worn Running Boots, Horned Viking Helmet. I would love to get my hands on that helmet, and I might farm it with my Tauren just so I can have it. This item used to be Plate, but was switched to Mail in Cataclysm.

The last 2 items there are quest rewards.

Scholomance
Has an insane amount of gear in it. Since we’re getting into level 40 content, I’m only going to list Mail Armor from now on, even though there may be some really nice upgrades for you that are Leather. I’m also going to stop listing items that do not give a bonus to Agility, except for weapons, and special slots such as trinkets and relics.

Of particular note are the Libram of Divinity and Totem of Sustaining as they are both Relics which you’ve likely not had access to up to this point, nor will you likely have access to another for quite some time. They also have a gem slot which can give you even more stats, though depending on which gem you put in you may not be able to benefit from the extra stats for quite a while.

You can use up to a Delicate Cardinal Ruby in this relic for +20 Agility, or if you can’t find/make/afford one then you can go with a Delicate Scarlet Ruby for +16 Agility instead. There are also lesser versions that will cost less gold on the AH (and give you less Agility), but those are the top two you’re looking for and they should be easy to find since people are still using them in some of their Cataclysm gear.

You may also consider using one of these Hit Gems since dual wielding requires more Hit, or you may even want to consider one of these Intellect Gems to increase the damage and crit rate of your spells as well as the size of your mana pool. Being able to use up to Wrath level gems in a level 40 item is pretty fantastic.

The Hammer of Revitalization gets a special mention because of its damage. It doesn’t give us the best stats, but that 12 Intellect is still pretty good and the damage is higher than the other weapons listed here.

The Counterattack Lodestone should go to a tank, of course, but if they don’t want it then you might as well take it as you’re not likely to have anything especially better.

The Dire Maul is a quest reward.

Zul’FarrakRipsaw: 1H Axe, Chance on hit: Wounds the target for 75 damage.The Hand of Antu’sul: 1H Mace, Chance on hit: Blasts nearby enemies with thunder increasing the time between their attacks by 11% for 10 sec and doing 7 Nature damage to them. Will affect up to 4 targets.

The Hand of Antu’sul is a great weapon. It doesn’t have any stats on it, but it has solid damage and the proc on it has no cooldown, meaning when you dual wield them you can have several back-to-back procs off of all of your attacks and all of your Windfury-procced attacks as well, turning you into quite the low level AoE melee machine.

Balnazzar’s Hide is a quest reward, as are the four relics at the end of that list. With a sure way to get your hands on an early relic, I highly suggest you run Strath once you reach the level required to get one (Idol is the one you want, btw). Slap a Wrath level gem in that sucker for +20 Agility, +20 Hit, +20 Intellect or anything else you please.

I mention the Lightning Bolts trinket primarily because it’s additional Hit, but also because it has an AoE Lightning effect which just screams Shaman while also being interesting.

The first class I ever really tried to get into on my own was the Shaman. My first toon was a Hunter that I got to level 20, but I had no idea what I was doing and just shot things in the face until they either died or closed into melee range with me. But the Shaman was the first class that I ever did any research on to try to learn how to play it and play it well. In looking at the class my first impressions were to be Elemental or Resto because casting just seemed so much more powerful than melee back in the day, but then I eventually found out the insane burst damage of Windfury and I was sold.

I’ve leveled up a few Enhancement Shamans in my time, though none of them ever reached max level. My highest level Shaman to date was level 54, an Orc Enhancement Shaman named Belgawrath. But during Wrath my wife’s main was an Enhancement Shaman so I’m continually reading guides and blog posts about the class and spec so that I can pass on all of the important information to her.

But now the time comes once again for me to level my own, but this time I’m going all the way to 85.

Playing an Enhancement Shaman
Enhancement Shamans are a great example of a hybrid class that has a truly hybrid playstyle as well. You’re a dual wielding melee class that deals a large portion of your damage as magic damage rather than just melee. Being tied so closely to the elements also means that you have a lot of flavor in the magic that you use as well, and though it’s all elemental, it’s not all tied to a specific element.

Of the dual wielding classes you’re more closely related to the Death Knight, in my opinion, than any other. Rather than weaving diseases into your melee, you’re instead weaving bursts of elemental damage, and rather than summoning the dead for aid you call on the spirit of wolves. You’re not a sneaky Rogue, or a pansy Hunter afraid of getting hit. You might be similar to a Fury Warrior, but I’ve honestly never played one of those beyond level 14 so I can’t say from experience.

Of all the characters I’ve ever played, the Shaman gives me the strongest feeling of actually “being there” in combat. All Shamans are able to take on the form of a Ghost Wolf, but only Enhancement (early on at least) can do so instantly, and I absolutely love turning into a wolf, charging towards an opponent and unleashing my fury on them, then instantly dropping back into wolf form to charge down the next target. It might not do much for you, but I’m a huge fan.

Shamans also come with a very special class mechanic that is all their own: Totems. Totems work similar to the party/raid-wide buffs of other classes, but rather than being cast on players they are instead centered around a totem that is placed on the ground. When the totems are active, they grant their buff to a wide area. Most totems work in that fashion, providing buffs of one kind or another, but there are others that deal/heal damage or summon elemental pets for their duration as well. We’ll get into the specifics a little bit later for those you’ll actually use as Enhancement, but it deserved a mention here.

Shamans also have another special class mechanic which is their Shields. Shamans have three different Shield spells, with Lightning Shield and Water Shield available to all specs, and Earth Shield available only to Restoration Shamans. Each of these shields is built around a “charges” mechanic that has a specific effect whenever a charge is triggered to be used. Lightning Shield deals damage, Water Shield restores mana, and Earth Shield heals the target when they get hit. More on those later as well.

Enhancement-Specific Tips
As Enhancement you don’t use a whole lot of your mana during combat, and what you do use you’ll typically regenerate through your class abilities anyway. You still cast spells very frequently, but you typically don’t have to worry too much about mana. As a melee class though, you are a bit more “squishy” than many other melee classes because you only wear Leather armor until level 40 where you upgrade to Mail. But remember that Shamans are also healers, and because you’re not spending much of your mana it’s usually not a problem for you to stop the offense for the sake of casting a healing spell on yourself.

As a DPS spec you’ll typically want to use Lightning Shield to deal additional damage whenever an enemy hits you with an attack. At later levels you may occasionally switch to Water Shield instead to be sure you have adequate mana. In this level range, Lightning Shield is a passive DPS spell, dealing damage only when you’re attacked, but at higher levels you’ll also be able to trigger the charges of Lightning Shield with your attacks.

Remember that Shamans are a partially hybrid class with a very hybrid playstyle. You’re meant to be able to heal while you’re in your DPS spec, so do so. You’re not supposed to be “the healer”, but you are designed to be able to toss those heals out there when they’re needed. Shamans can be very “squishy”, taking a lot of damage in a short time, but we also pack some very efficient healing to get us through those times. At these low levels your healing spells will nearly restore you to full in a single cast. You can take that one of two ways: either you can heal in the middle of combat to be sure to make it to the end, or you can push yourself and your damage potential to be able to destroy your enemies quickly and efficiently, and then heal yourself back up to full at the end of combat.

Important Spells & Abilities
Note that all numeric values are taken from the level 29 version of the spell for the purposes of this post.

Lightning Shield (8): The caster is surrounded by 3 balls of lightning. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for Nature damage. This expends one lightning ball. Only one ball will fire every few seconds. Lasts 10 minutes. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Searing Totem (10): This totem repeatedly attacks an enemy within 20 yards for fire damage. The totem will prefer to target enemies that are afflicted by your Flame Shock or Stormstrike effects. Lasts for 1 minute.

Lightning Bolt is the ability you start off with, and what you’ll be spamming for a few levels in order to kill things quickly. As you get higher in level you’ll cast this less and less until you final get a talent that allows you to cast it instantly, but that won’t happen in this level range. Primal Strike is going to be one of your best friends in this level bracket as one of the few melee attacks you have access to. If you’re in melee range then you want to use Primal Strike whenever it’s not on cooldown.

Strength of Earth Totem is your primary Earth totem now and forever. It provides both Strength and Agility to your group, both of which contribute to your primary damage stat Attack Power. I couldn’t find the exact amount that it grants you at level 29 and neither of my shamans right now is the right level to test it to see. Earth Shock is one of your bread and butter attacks, it’s an instant burst of damage which also provides a nice attack speed reduction to the target for a bit of additional survivability.

At level eight you receive Lightning Shield which is one of your primary buffs as it passively deals damage to anyone attacking you. Keeping this buff active is a bit of a pain until level 25 at which time you can add a glyph that prevents the orbs from being expended and instead turns it into a flat 10 minute buff. Flametongue Weapon is one of our most important weapon imbues at at level 10 you’ll have it on both of your weapons. Wowhead tells me that 408 Spell Power is the value at level 29, but that sounds way too high to me so I think the numbers are wrong.

Last up on the 1-10 list is Searing Totem which is your primary Fire totem for the rest of the game. It deals decent damage for now that will increase a lot more as you get higher in level and spend talent points to enhance its effect.

By choosing Enhancement as your specialization at level 10 you receive all of the following:Lava Lash: You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 200% of that weapon’s damage to an enemy target. Damage is increased by 40% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue.Mental Quickness: Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 50% of your attack power, and reduces the mana cost of your instant beneficial, damaging, and totem spells by 75%.Dual Wield: Allows one-hand and off-hand weapons to be equipped in your off-hand, allows you to parry frontal melee attacks, and increases your chance to hit by an additional 6%.Primal Wisdom: Your melee attacks have a 40% chance to immediately restore 5% of your base mana.Master: Enhanced Elements: Increases all Fire, Frost, and Nature damage done by 20%. Each point of Mastery increases damage by an additional 2.5%.

Lava Lash is one of our signature attacks, one that you’ll use very frequently and will be a big contribution to your overall damage. Mental Quickness is how our spell damage remains viable as a melee class that weaves spell damage into most of what we do, and it reduces spell costs by a 75% which is how we manage to cast spells as a class that doesn’t stack Intellect.

Dual Wield is another signature of our spec, allowing us to wield two weapons at once, and it’s one of the reasons I love playing this class as much as I do. Primal Wisdom relates to Mental Quickness up above, providing us with the means to regenerate our mana through melee combat so that we can continue casting spells even with a relatively small mana pool.

Enhanced Master doesn’t actually turn on until level 80, but it’s a big boost to damage once you do get access to it.

Level 11-20

Flametongue Totem (12): This totem increases the spell power of all party and raid members within 40 yards by 6%. Lasts 5 minutes.

Ghost Wolf (16): Turns the Shaman into a Ghost Wolf, increaes speed by 30%. As a Ghost Wolf, the Shaman is less hindered by effects that would reduce movement speed.

Wind Shear (16): Disrupts the target’s concentration with a burst of wind, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school form being cast for 2 seconds. Also lowers your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you.

Earthbind Totem (18): This totem slows the movement speed of enemies within 10 yards of the totem. Lasts for 45 seconds.

Water Shield (20): The caster is surrounded by 3 globes of water, graning 15 mana per 5 seconds. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, mana is restored to the caster. This expends one water globe. Only one globe will activate every few seconds. Lasts 10 minutes. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Flametongue Totem is great for spell casters, but not a huge benefit to us as Enhancement. When I’m grouped with two or more casters I usually use this one instead of Searing Totem to benefit the group more. Flame Shock is our other bread and butter shock that we’ll use all the time. Flame Shock is best used on targets with large health pools, such as dungeon bosses, so that it will be active for the 18 seconds it takes for its full damage to take its place.

I decided to list Purge here as an offensive dispel, which I don’t often do. For the most part you’ll cast this in PvP to remove buffs from enemy targets, but there are some buffs you’ll want to remove in PvE as well. Since PvP is definitely a viable option for leveling your characters now, you’re going to see me mentioning things like this more than I used to. Ghost Wolf is a wonderful movement speed buff, allowing us to take on the form of a wolf to move faster. That second sentence in the description above means that you cannot go below 100% movement speed while in Ghost Wolf form. So you move at 130% normally with the buff, and you cannot be slowed below the 100%. Note that that applies to effects, not conditions, so you’ll still be slowed by things such as being in water.

Wind Shear is primarily used for its spell interrupting feature, though it does also reduce your threat in a group setting. I primarily use this on crowd control spells being cast on my party (like the Sleep spell cast by the Druids in Wailing Caverns) or to counter healing spells. In PvP you can use it on Player Pets that you haven’t generated threat against to cause them to stop attacking you. An experienced PvP player will quickly put them back on you, but you’d be surprised how many players don’t notice. Cleanse Spirit can remove Curse debuffs cast on you or your party, which is actually pretty common. Even though you’re playing a DPS spec it’s good practice to be in the habit of dispelling Curses as you can save your healers time and mana.

Earthbind Totem is somewhat situational. It’s a great totem for PvP, especially to slow Flag Carriers or pursuers of your Flag Carrier, or for allowing you to escape a deadly situation. In PvE it can slow mobs who run away when they’re low on health or it can be used to get some distance between you and your attackers to get a heal cast if you’re in danger of dying. Water Shield is the alternative to Lightning Shield, but not typically used by Enhancement. If you do find yourself in need of mana then you can certainly switch to Water Shield to get it back faster. I often switch to this shield in LFG in my upper-20’s as I start using more of our mana-intensive spells for AoE damage, but for soloing and questing I stick to Lightning Shield.

Water Walking (24): Allows the friendly target to walk across water for 10 minutes. Any damage will cancel the effect.

Frostbrand Weapon (26): Imbue the Shaman’s weapon with frost. Each hit has a chance of causing additional Frost damage and slowing the target’s movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds. Lasts 30 minutes.

Chain Lightning (28): Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 55 to 61 Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. Affects 3 total targets.

Fire Nova (28): Causes the shaman’s active Flametongue, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem.

Frost Shock is another spell that I mention primarily for its usefulness in PvP. Slowing targets is a pretty big deal in a lot of PvP matches and talent points can be spent to make it freeze your target in place instead of just slowing them as well. In PvE it’s really only useful if you need to stop runners; Earth and Flame Shocks are more useful in PvE.

Water Walking is a cool utility spell that allows you to move on water. It’s great for certain PvP Battlegrounds and has some small usefulness in certain dungeons as well. For PvE can save you a little travel time prior to having a flying mount by letting you cut across water without being slowed down. Frostbrand Weapon is one you’ll only use in PvP as all of the other imbues offer better damage, but in PvP this can be a really good enchant to roll with.

Chain Lightning is our first AoE spell, and an interesting one in that it’s more multi-target than AoE. You’ll only really use this one in LFG or perhaps in PvP, unless you’re a AoE crazed leveler like myself in which case you’ll use it all the time. If you do use this one often then you’ll want to be sure to use Water Shield to keep your mana supply high. Fire Nova is our first literal AoE spell, dealing damage in a ring around our Fire totems. Searing Totem is our primary Fire totem when soloing, but it doesn’t allow Fire Nova to be cast through it, so you’ll need to remember to plant the right totems to use it, and the nova is centered on the totem itself, so you’ll need to drop your totem near your targets for it to be useful.

[NOTE: At level 29 you should replace Primal Strike with Stormstrike. Remove PS from your bars completely and forget that it exists. The two share a cooldown and are designed such that Stormstrike takes its place for Enhancement. Stormstrike is a better ability in every possible way and should be used from level 29 on.]

Questing Single Mob
In this rotation you’re just going to destroy targets as fast as possible. If you’re using heirloom weapons then I definitely suggest you stick to using Earth Shock as your go-to shock spell, but if you’re not using heirlooms then you might find Flame Shock to be a better option for the opening cast as it’s DoT damage will add up over time to be even more than Earth Shock. Any shocks you cast after the first one should be Earth Shocks though, unless you missed with the Flame Shock cast.

Questing Multi-Mob
If you know that your’e going to face multiple mobs, or multiple groups of mobs, go ahead and cast your totems before you get started on the actual combat. Just remember not to drop aggressive totems (like Searing) until you’re within range for it to hit your target(s) and you’re ready for combat to start.

I don’t suggest you intentionally get into combat with multiple targets as Enhancement unless you’re using heirlooms or are over-geared for the mobs you’re facing. Shamans have some good healing spells and a lot of utility, but they’re also pretty easily killed in this level range if you’re taking sustained damage.

If you do have good gear and decent survivability though, I suggest you go with this rotation. The point here is primarily to get Flame Shock cast on all of your targets so that they’re all taking damage, and then speeding up their deaths with your melee attacks. Light one up, bash them in the face a time or two, switch targets and repeat.

If you need to heal in these situations, go ahead and do so. If you find yourself running short on mana because you’re healing go ahead and switch over to Water Shield for the mana return and switch back to Lightning Shield when your health and mana are at a more manageable level.

LFG Trash
This one is the same as solo questing, except that sometimes you might want to bother with totems and others you might not. I don’t cast my totems by default at this level when I’m doing LFG, instead I wait to see how quickly we’re progressing through the instance. If we’re moving at a fast pace then I usually don’t bother with any of them until we see a boss. If we’re going kind of slow or we have people who are /afk or something, then I’ll go ahead and drop the totems to increase everyone’s performance.

For most trash pulls though, just stick to Earth Shocks and using your melee strikes as often as possible.

Wind Shear: Deserves a special mention here though. Shamans have crazy-good spell interruption capabilities thanks to Wind Shear. If you see a mob casting spells, particularly a healer, interrupt as many of their spells as possible. If you’re in instances with caster mobs who are especially annoying (LOOKING AT YOU, WAILING CAVERNS DRUIDS!!!) then be sure to make use of Wind Shear when they’re casting the spell you don’t want to go through.

LFG Boss
For bosses you want to maximize your DPS potential. That means that you’re going to make sure Flame Shock stays active on the boss as long as possible, and that you’re going to utilize your totems for the good of your group.

Totems: Strength of Earth, Flametongue, Healing Stream

Using Searing Totem will give you a higher, personal DPS score on a boss fight, but if you have at least one caster DPS in your group then you should probably lean towards Flametongue as both they and the healer will benefit from it as will you, though to a lesser extent. If there are no caster DPS in the group then switch your Fire totem over to Searing and drop it right next to the boss when you move into melee range.

Once Flame Shock is dealing its damage you’ll start rotating through your melee attacks and casting Earth Shock as filler while you wait to refresh Flame Shock. If you time your shocks just right you can get two Earth Shocks off with almost perfect timing for your shocks to refresh just as Flame Shock ends, allowing you to reapply it immediately with no time lost.

Wind Shear will still work on many boss abilities at low levels, so be ready to use it when you get the chance as Shamans have a fairly flexible and laid back rotation at this point. Spells you want to interrupt in particular are healing spells and AoE damage spells such as Chain Lightning. I could go into specifics, but this is a class guide, not a boss guide, so just use your own judgement.

Elemental Weapons 2/2: Increases the passive bonuses granted by your Flametongue Weapon and Earthliving Weapon abilities by 40%, the damage of your extra attacks from Windfury Weapon by 40%, and the effectiveness of the ongoing benefits of your Unleash Elements ability by 50%.

Ancestral Swiftness 2/2: Reduces the cast time of your Ghost Wolf spell by 2 seconds and increases the movement speed by 15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.

With Lava Lash being a staple attack and the fact that you get it at level 10, this is my first choice of Prime Glyphs, increasing its damage by 20%. Next up is Stormstike, though you don’t get that spell until level 29, as the bonus crit can be useful. Finally I have Flame Shock listed though it’s important to note that it’s really only useful in LFG boss fights or in PvP as typical mobs and dungeon trash will not live long enough for even the normal duration to matter.

Lightning Shield is overall going to be the most useful glyph for you here; it’s how you turn your Lightning Shield into a solid 10 minute buff instead of lasting only for three hits worth. Ghost Wolf is my next choice because moving faster is always a good thing, both in PvE and PvP. Frost Shock deserves a mention for those of you interested in getting into some low level PvP, though I would generally suggest Ghost Wolf above this one.

Fire Nova is probably the best investment if you’re looking to beef up your AoE ability in dungeons by increasing its radius and taking away the hassle of replanting your totems. Chain Lightning is one I haven’t used myself, but it deserves a mention for AoE if you enjoy it.

I’m a huge fan of getting rid of reagents, so Water Walking is the definite first choice here. Arctic Wolf is a simple vanity glyph that just changes the way you look in Ghost Wolf form. The only other Minor Glyph available at this level range is Thunderstorm which is a spell that only Elemental Shamans can use, so it’s completely worthless to you.

Gearing Up Your Shaman
As Enhancement your primary stat is Agility. Each point gives you 2 Attack Power and it also boosts your Melee Crit (and Dodge). Intellect boosts your Spell Power on a 1:1 ratio, and it also increases your Spell Crit and your mana. Strength is a decent stat for you as it still gives a 1:1 ratio for Attack Power, but it’s not something you really want to seek out unless you just cannot find any Agility pieces at all for those slots.

You also want to look for gear with Hit on it in particular since you take a penalty to melee hits for dual wielding. You don’t need a ton of Hit to get you by while you’re leveling, but if you find some good Agility pieces that also have Hit on them then be sure to pick them up.

For green gear with random enchants you’re probably most interested in “..of the Falcon” (Agility and Intellect), “..of the Tiger” (Agility and Strength), and “..of the Monkey” (Agility and Stamina).

As you get into running random dungeons you’re looking for items with the “..of Agility” and “..of the Bandit” (Agility, Stamina, and Crit) enchant on them from the Satchel of Helpful Goods.

There are two ways you can look at gearing up your low level Shaman. You can either go for maximum killing potential, which is stacking Agility above all else, or you can go with a more balanced build where you look for gear with both Agility and Stamina. I prefer maximizing my damage potential, personally, and going for good survival pieces in slots that I have no Agility piece to fill in. If you’re not used to healing on the fly as a DPS spec though, you might want to lean more towards survival.

Dungeon Gear
There are a lot of good pieces of gear that you can find in low level dungeons, some of them pretty decent and some rather outstanding. I’m not going to go into detail as far as which pieces to pair up from which dungeons to get a “best in slot” list, but I will give you a list of the items that if they dropped for me, I would consider rolling on if they were an upgrade to what I currently had.

A lot of the “good” lower level gear is tuned more towards Strength, which is still good though it’s not great. Agility is where it’s at, so don’t pass up an Agility piece for a Strength piece unless the value is at least twice that of the Agility piece.

The last two items are both quest rewards, but the same quest and rewards exist for both factions.

The Defias Leather set is a great set to have, unfortunately the Chest is no longer available in the game now that Cataclysm has replaced the final boss. The four remaining pieces are still very good, but they all have low drop rates. The good thing about this set though, is that it’s all BoE so you do have a chance of finding it on the auction house.

Cobrahn’s Boots are a quest reward, available to both factions. The Embrace of the Viper set is an example of the exceptional armor. Unlike the Defias Leathers from Deadmines, all but one of the pieces from the Embrace set are BoP, so you’ll have to farm all but the Gloves yourself if you want them, but the drop rates are significantly higher than the Defias set.

These are all really great items, especially the legs and helm. As a dual wielding class Hit rating is important because you take a penalty for wielding two weapons, and both of these pack a great amount of Hit as well as exceptional Agility and Stamina.

The Charged gear by itself looks pretty crappy, I know. But, the random enchant on it can be exceptional. You’re looking for “Charged Gear of..”: the Tiger (7 Agi, 7 Str), the Falcon (7 Agi, 7 Int), the Monkey (7 Agi, 7 Stam), Agility (10 Agi), or Strength (10 Str). I listed those in the order I would personally rank them, with “..of the Tiger” coming out on top as it provides a total of 21 Attack Power.

Both of these items can be purchased with Honor, and you can get all the honor you need for them in about 2-3 Battlegrounds worth of fighting. The run speed on the boots is particularly worth looking into, even if the stats themselves aren’t as great as other boots you might already have.

There are two versions of the necklace, one for each faction. There are also multiple copies of them for different level ranges, so you can also get one of these for other level ranges, including level 19. You’ll have to travel to Ashenvale to purchase this as Alliance, and Northern Barrens as Horde since they are sold by the Warsong Gulch vendors.

The Boots come in multiple names as well as two versions of each for their respective factions. They also come in multiple level ranges just like the necklace, so you can keep coming back at different level ranges for definite upgrades, though you can’t get them for lower than the 29 bracket. To purchase these you’ll have to travel to Arathi Highlands for both factions, as the Arathi Basin vendors are the ones who sell them.

To do this, I’m going to do a breakdown of each class and show you which Hand Me Downs (HMD’s) I suggest using for the given class and spec. Most of this information is copied and pasted from the original post, but I’ve put in specifics related to the Warrior class and specs and hopefully given a bit more detail and direction for why I chose what I did.

General Concept
The basic idea of what I call “hand-me-downs” (or HMD’s) is that you’re taking items that can be passed from one toon to the next (so Common, White-quality items) and enhancing them to make them better. Enhancements that we’re going to talk about here come mostly from the Enchanting profession, though a few may also be found in Blacksmithing (counterweights, sheild spikes, etc), Leatherworking (armor kits), and Engineering (scopes).

The whole point here is to get low level gear that you can pass around to any alts that you ever roll to make them more powerful starting out. As Cynwise and I have proved through experiment in both PvE and PvP at low levels, it isn’t heirlooms that make your character so overpowered, it’s actually the enchants.

So if you’re trying to decide on which class to role, or what to go take one for a test drive for 10 levels or so before deciding whether or not to keep them, this is a great way to get a feel for how the class is going to play for you without putting in investment that’s going to be wasted. Since these items can be passed around due to their lack of binding, it’s not a big deal to roll a character, gain a few levels, scrap them and reroll another, and so on until you find a nice fit.

Elemental Weapons
We’re going to start off with weapons because they have more potential than armor for making your low level toons extra powerful. When you’re choosing a hand-me-down weapon, you need to consider which type you’re really looking for. For Melee weapons you’re interested in three things: damage, usefulness, and coolness.

WARNING! – Using your Shaman weapon buffs will bind non-bound gear to you. Meaning, if you cast Flametongue Weapon (or any of the others) on your HMD’s, they become bound to the character and can no longer be traded to your other toons. The only weapons that will not become soulbound when using your class’s weapon buffs are the actual BoA heirlooms.

As I’ve said before, the Mace is the only weapon that every healing class in the game has in common, so the Mace is one of your best choices. However, the Dagger is the one weapon that can be shared across every type of spellcaster in the game, except for the Holy Paladin. If you only want to enchant a single caster HMD, then the dagger is the best option because both healers and DPS casters can use it save for the Paladin.

Any of these, or similar, weapons will work for you though you’ll want to keep in mind that as a Shaman caster you can take advantage of shields where most other casters cannot, so a one-hand is more useful to you overall than a staff.

In 3.5 the +30 SP was the go-to enchant for casters, but with the change to spell power Mighty Intellect has taken the lead. It’s also the cheapest of the three options which makes it that much more appealing. You don’t get quite as much spell power out of the deal, but you’re trading 7-8 SP for 330 mana which is more than worth it for low level casters in my opinion.

The best way for you to kill things when you roll a fresh Shaman is to just spam Lightning Bolt until your target is dead. You really don’t have anything else to help you along until Primal Strike at level 3, so you don’t necessarily need a melee HMD until then. If you want one anyway, then the Broad Axe is your choice for level 1+, while the Vile Fin Battle Axe or Frostbit Staff will work well for level 4-5 on.

Since a two-hander will work better than a one-hander in those early levels I’m not listing any one-hand options until the Mace at level 9. You can’t dual wield until level 10, but you can use a pair of Maces once you hit level 10. If you want to add a little flair to your low level toon you can go for the Brass Knuckles instead as very, very few players use fist weapons early in the game.

As I mentioned above, using your class’s weapon buffs (Flametongue Weapon) will bind your HMD’s to this character, so you don’t want to use them unless you don’t mind having to vendor the HMD’s when the Shaman gets high enough to stop using them.

If you’re going to go Enhancement, I suggest you pick up the Maces at level 9 and use them until you replace them with dungeon drops.

Since the purpose of HMD’s is to be used at low level, you want to consider what kind of investment you’re really making. The best enchant for your class is Agility, but the best enchant for those low levels is technically Crusader. Since you don’t get Dual Wield until level 10 your best damage increase is going to come in the form of a two-handed weapon. You can put a +25 Agi enchant on it for a consistent +50 AP, or you can put Crusader on it for a fairly reliable +100 AP most of the time.

Note: Concerning Crusader, Fiery Weapon, and Lifestealing – these enchants all work off of a proc rate which ties directly to the weapon’s speed. The slower your weapon, the more often it will proc on a per-swing basis. The faster the weapon, the fewer times per-swing it will proc. The proc rate is based on a Procs Per Minute (PPM), so you won’t get any more procs each minute from a slow weapon than you would from a fast weapon, but the chance of a proc on each swing is higher if it’s slow.

It’s kind of confusing, so let me simplify it by saying this: Given the level range at which HMD’s are viable, the strength of classes, and the fragility of mobs, you’re better off using slow weapons rather than fast weapons when using proc-based enchants.

I haven’t decided yet which of those I honestly prefer more, so for now I’m using Crusader since I already have it. When it procs I know I have 12 seconds of one-shotting most mobs, so I go on a mini killing spree while it’s active and loot after the buff wears off. Between the two Agility enchants, you want a two-hander prior to level 10, and then two one-handers from 10 on, so if you can dual wield the +15 Agi (x2) is better than +25 Agi, but until then +25 > +15 (x1).

Fiery and Lifestealing are both great choices as well, with Fiery being the better of the two. I like that Fiery procs often lead to one-shots, but the higher you get in level the less impressive the enchant becomes. Lifestealing does at least have some scaling with your level, but it’s proc rate isn’t as high as Fiery so it doesn’t happen as often.

Shields
I really only suggest you even bother looking at shields if you’re going to go Elemental or Restoration. Enhancement is better served with a two-handed weapon prior to level 10 and then dual wielding from there on, so there’s never any room for a shield as Enhancement.

Shields aren’t all that important prior to level 10 or 15, so you might want to consider doing another search that looks at higher level shields if you’re not going to use one right away. If you want one starting out though, the Large Round Shield is as good as it gets. While I do have a level 1 shield that I can pass around on my alts that use them, I wouldn’t really recommend that you bother with one below level 5 when the Standard Issue and Heater Shields become available. They give almost twice the armor value and it takes all of 15 minutes to reach level 5 without heirlooms so it’s not a big deal to wait. And the Standard Issue Shield is probably the coolest looking low level shield in the game, give or take a couple of the other options I have listed there.

This is actually a hard call to make. Elemental now gets Thunderstorm at level 10 which can negate the usefulness of a shield spike because most mobs won’t get to touch you before they’re dead. But, the shield spike provides a lot of extra damage for low level characters too. I haven’t been able to test these two out yet, so I’m going with my gut on the priority order here. I’m going to say that for Elemental you want Vitality over a shield spike, while Resto probably wants the additional damage from a shield spike rather than Vitality.

Armor
Armor isn’t nearly as important as your weapons because in the levels that you’ll use HMD’s you should not have very many issues with survivability, making the armor stat much less impressive than it really is. The main benefit that you’ll get from your HMD’s then is actually the enchants that you place on them. The best-in-slot items for both chest and leg slots (that can be used at level 1) are interestingly cloth items; Haliscan Jacket and Haliscan Pantaloons.

And since the whole point of HMD’s is to enchant them in order to make them more powerful than regular gear, we’re not going to bother making HMD’s that cannot benefit from enchants, or which benefit only a very small amount. So we’re not going to look at Belts, jewelry or trinkets.

Above is the vendor bought Leather set from the Blood Elf starting area. For level 1 characters these do end up being the strongest items available to you, so I haven’t bothered listing items for other levels as armor upgrades really aren’t important for your first 20 levels unless you’re a tank.

The Haliscan Jacket and Pantaloons and the Tuxedo Pants easily beat out the best leather options at level 1, so they’re listed here as well even though they’re cloth. They also happen to have higher item levels than all of the other options, giving you the ability to put more worthwhile enchants on them as well.

The best choice here is +6 Stats which gives you 90 Mana and 6 Spell Power, though it can only be placed on the Haliscan Jacket. The +4 and +3 Stats enchants are listed for the same reason, providing both spell power and mana. I like the +100 Mana more than +3 stats for Shaman HMD’s because while mana isn’t an issue in most cases I’m more likely to need the extra mana than I am a mere 3 points of spell power. Mana regen isn’t usually a huge issue, but if you run into mana problems then you might want to consider Restore Mana Prime.

We have basically the same situation for Enhancement, except the +X Stats enchants get much more beneficial. The +6 Stats for instance grants 18 Attack Power (6 Agi = 12 AP, 6 Str = 6 AP) as well as 6 Spell Power and 90 mana, all of which you’ll use. This is a great example of when being a hybrid is a good thing. Shamans do have a knack for being squishy in the early levels though, so +150 Health isn’t a bad idea either, if you have the Haliscan to put it on.

I personally choose +15 SP for my bracer enchants, but the +7 Intellect enchant is a lot better now than it was before 4.0. You can either have 15 SP or you can have 7 SP and 105 Mana to go with it. It’s up to you really, I just like to have that extra level of power from the 15 SP for my personal taste.

I feel that the mp5 enchant is the weakest here, but it’s still a decent fit for a caster. You may consider it if you’re a healer, but I wouldn’t even look at it if you’re going for DPS unless you can’t find or can’t afford one of the others.

I don’t know why in the world they gave us +9 to both Strength and Stamina, but not Agility. We don’t even have a +7, +5, or even +3 Agility; they just left us with the dinky +1. However, we do still get 1:1 AP from Strength, so the +9 Str enchant is your best bet here. If you’re feeling especially fragile then go ahead and reach for the +9 Stam instead, but you shouldn’t have many survivability problems in this level range.

Casters have a lot of really good options here. The generic enchant of choice is Healing Power for +16 SP to all of your spells. Unfortunately, most of our damage is Nature which doesn’t have it’s own “.. Power” enchant, so Healing Power is your best option. Haste can help you in a few situations, though mostly in your reduced cast times.

Gloves provide us one of the best enchants of all of our HMD’s with Superior Agility (+15 Agi). The +15 Agi enchant isn’t exactly easy to find though, because it’s not exactly easy to farm either. If you can’t find it, then look for the +7 Agi instead, or +7 Str if you can’t find either of the Agility enchants.

I’m going to go ahead and list these here just for the sake of completion. I don’t use HMD pants because of the fact that these are the only enchants you can put on them. A little extra armor never hurt anybody, but it never really helps for your low level toons either. Not when we’re talking about 8-16 points of it, at least. If you want to use them, then here they are.

Casters get the shaft on boot enchants, with nothing really standing out. I lean towards the speed increase for my personal use, but you might prefer the +5 Hit. Run Speed will help you quest and level faster, while Accuracy will help you kill faster, so the choice is yours.

While my personal choice for HMD boots is almost always Minor Speed, the +7 Agility is the best one for actually improving your performance. You can also get a lot of use out of the +5 Hit, especially once you can dual wield at level 10, so keep that one in mind. I only use the +7 Stamina enchant on my twinks, and even then I usually go for the run speed instead, but it’s there if you want it.

The Stealth enchant has stepped up in 4.0.3a as the top enchant for Agility-based HMD’s. Rather than making it harder to be noticed while it stealth, it now gives you +8 Agility and +8 Dodge making it far superior to every other cloak enchant available on your HMD’s. The mats for it are also fairly inexpensive given how powerful this enchant it.

Elem/Resto may want to consider Subtlety if you’re going to be using the dungeon finder a lot. The Defense enchant is good for any spec as well, but it’s not all that great. Consider the +70 Armor if you’re going to do a lot of solo questing, and Subtlety if you’re doing a lot of LFG.

With my beta key firmly in hand, and the client downloaded and installed (after 38 hours), a lot of my leveling now is done in the beta rather than the live, and it’s most likely going to stay that way. I don’t want to leave the blog hanging or go off in another direction with it, so I’m going to keep right on blogging about leveling, just with a Cataclysm touch in mind instead.

I’m going to stay away from spoilers as far as the game itself goes, but I am going to talk about new abilities, where you get them, how you get them, and so on and so forth. There will be some small spoilers in relation to those topics, so if you don’t even want to know what abilities are changing and such, then you’ll probably want to ignore me for a couple more months until it comes out live. I’ve said it since Cataclysm was revealed to us in BlizzCon 2009, that it will launch in November and I still believe that that is true.

Each post that I make in relation to Cataclysm prior to its actual launch will have a disclaimer at the top noting which type of spoilers (if any) you’ll find in the post, along with the beta build number associated with the information in the post.

For this post I’m going to talk about leveling for all of the races and classes up to level 10, just to give you an idea of how they’re going to feel coming right out of the box.Turn the page to find out more…

Today we’re going to look at which heirlooms you should purchase for your leveling alts. A couple of weeks ago I covered Enchanting Your Heirlooms, so I’ll refer you back to that post if you have already purchased heirlooms and would like to look into the various ways that you can enhance their performance via enchants and item enhancements.

Equipment Lists
I’m going to make a list of heirlooms for each class individually, and I will mention certain items that would work better for certain specs as well. I will tell you right now though, that while I have leveled most classes to a significant leveling milestone, I have not played every class and every spec. So if you see me suggest an item for your class because I know you’re looking for Spell Power, but you feel it would be better for you to go with another because it has Spirit as well as Spell Power, then go with your gut as you may very well know that particular class better than I do.

What I am going to have is a list of weapons, chests, and shoulders for you to use in each of your different specs, and a (hopefully) short explanation of why. In some cases there may be multiple suggestions made for a particular slot, particularly when it comes to weapons. The reason for this will generally be because there are multiple builds that people use for that class, or because certain equipment options aren’t available until a higher level. A good example of this is the Enhancement Shaman who benefits more from a large two-hand weapon until level 40 when they can dual wield one-handers, or the Warrior who may dual wield one-handers until level 60 and then dual wield two-handers from there on.

Under each class header you’ll find the list of gear that I suggest and prefer. There will also be a Substitutions list which are items that I consider to be reasonable replacements for the items I suggest in case you already have some of those and would rather not purchase others, or in case you have more of one currency than another and can’t afford all of the recommended pieces.Turn the page to find out more…

Every now and then I get drawn back to the class that was my first real main, the Shaman. My first shaman didn’t make it all that far, capping at level 35, but he was the first character that I seriously leveled and intended to play for a long while. I had recently purchased the BoA Axe for a warrior that I was planning to level but then deleted after he got to level 3 (have I ever mentioned how much I hate playing Warriors?). I didn’t want that axe to go to waste though so I had to decide who else I could give it too. I didn’t want to give it to my hunter since he was already rocking some solid weapons, and my paladin will most likely be deleted before this article is even posted, so my only other option was to go back to my roots and roll a shaman.

Character Creation
Other than the ever-restricted Druid class, Shamans share the worst racial selection in the game with the Paladin with only one option for Alliance and three for Horde.

Alliance: DraeneiHorde: Orc, Tauren, Troll

After Cataclysm arrives we’ll be able to add Dwarves to the Alliance list, and Goblins to the Horde list.

If you roll Alliance pre-Cataclysm then your racial selection is made for you since you only have one option. If you roll Horde then I suggest Orc or Tauren if you’re going to roll Enhancement, or Troll if you prefer either Elemental or Restoration (neither of which I’m talking about this time).

My personal preference for Horde (and overall) is the Orc, but you’ll do just as well with a Tauren. I’m not a fan of troll shamans, but I’m not a fan of trolls to begin with. Basically, roll whatever you want to and looks the coolest in your opinion, but there’s mine.

Important Spells
Since I’m focusing on Enhancement here I’m going to emphasize those spells, but part of being a Shaman is tapping all of your available resources to be the best you can be at the position you’re in. You have more tools to use than almost every other class in any given situation, and your utility is what really makes you stand out.

I tend to use Lightning Bolt a lot up to level 12 or so, then I pretty well stop using it for about 30 levels or so. It’s great for pulling and adding in ranged DPS, but since we’re playing the melee spec it’s all about instant casts and weapon attacks for me.

Flame Shock should be your opening spell once you have it so that you get the extra damage from it’s DoT effect, otherwise Earth Shock is your burst spell and the one I usually use as a finisher of sorts if my melee falls just short of killing them.

I really only use Frost Shock in PvP or when things turn to crap and I have to either kite or die. For the most part I don’t bother using it. Wind Shear is situational when solo questing and for the most part I’d say just ignore it. I use it myself only to stay familiar with its use because of how much I PvP. Otherwise I’d say keep it somewhere handy if you’re running dungeons, but otherwise it doesn’t serve much purpose in questing.

If you’re in combat you’re generally better off using LHW because of the shorter cast time than HW. If you need a lot of health then it’s usually better to do LHW once or twice for a quick buffer and then HW for the big heal. If you’re actually healing in a group, then you should probably look for someone that knows more about shammy healing than I do.

Reincarnate is the beloved ability to self resurrect. When you die, assuming you have an ankh on you or the glyph to remove their need, you have the option of either releasing your spirit or using Reincarnate. One of the coolest things a shaman can do in PvP is to jump back up right after being killed and slay the attacker who thinks he’s safe. As for PvE uses, sometimes you’re going to die and this makes it easier to deal with. Otherwise I also like to use it for ease of travel by jumping off of a cliff and then just bringing myself back once I hit the bottom. But maybe that’s just me.

Shield SpellsLightning Shield: Your DPS shield. It has three charges and each time you’re hit expends one charge to deal Nature damage to that enemy.Water Shield: Your Mana Regen shield. Restores mana every 5 seconds and when hit it expends one of its three charges to restore mana.

You’ll bounce back and forth between these two shield spells (which have no mana cost, by the way) as Enhancement. When you’re running low on mana, switch over to Water Shield. If your mana’s fine and you want to increase your DPS then switch back to Lightning. When I AoE I default to Water, and when doing single target I default to Lightning.

Utility SpellsGhost Wolf: Turns you into a Ghost Wolf, increases speed by 40%, regenerating 1% of your health ever 5 seconds, and you are less hindered by effects that reduce movement speed.Far Sight: Changes your viewpoint to the targeted location for 1 minute, outdoors only.Water Walking: Allows you to walk on water for 10 minutes or until you take damage.Water Breathing: Allows you to breath underwater for 10 minutes.Astral Recall: A spell version of your Hearthstone.

Ghost Wolf is your method of travel prior to getting a mount and is often used in place of a mount until your epic ground mount becomes available at level 40, and it’s also useful in combat when you need to keep distance between yourself and your targets or when you need to get away for a quick heal. Water Walking is good for traveling and great for fishing. Water Breathing has its uses, but with the 3 minute timer we have these days it’s not really that important. Astral Recall is a second method of “hearthing”, which you can use in place of or in addition to your hearth stone.

Far Sight gets its own little mention here because it’s often dismissed completely by most players. It’s a spell that lets you target any area you can reach on your screen and lets you look as though you were standing at the point you cast it on. The great thing about this spell is that it lets you cast Far Sight again as though you’re standing at the point you’re currently viewing. The furthest I’ve ever bothered looking is from Iron Forge all the way down to Booty Bay, which is about 5 zones worth of chain casting. For regular play it’s not that useful, but it is fun. For PvP it’s amazing for strategical advantage.

Weapon enhancements are one of the most frequently disputed subjects in leveling guides. Some people prefer sticking with Rockbiter because they feel a consistent increase in DPS is better than spiky procs, others feel that Flametongue is better for the buff to your spells and the additional Fire damage can crit for burst dps, and some feel that Frostbrand’s slowing effect as well as it’s Frost damage makes leveling simpler. I don’t think anybody outside of PvP would ever suggest anything other than Windfury once you get to level 30, with the possible exception of your offhand weapon once you get dual wielding at level 40. Earthliving is what you’ll use if you ever have to fill the Healer’s role, otherwise not used in Enhancement.

Personally I prefer to switch from Rockbiter to Flametongue once it becomes available and then stick with it until Windfury at level 30. Frostbrand I’m not a huge fan of but I did try it out a bit on my most recent Shaman and it wasn’t all that bad. I suggest you play around with all three of them before level 30 and just figure out which one works best for you. Once level 30 rolls around, forget those three exist and switch to Windfury.

I’ll discuss Windfury in a bit more detail down below.

Totemic Breakdown
Totems are the signature ability of the Shaman class. Rather than casting buff spells on your party members, you drop totems and grant their buff to everyone in your party that stays within range of them. This system has is benefits and it’s drawbacks, but it’s what we have and so we’ll use them. Some people prefer not to bother with totems while they’re leveling because you have to recast them every time you relocate which is a major annoyance.

My personal preference for totem use is sort of half and half on using them versus not using them, depending on the situation. If you’re a frequent reader then you’ll know that I’m crazy about AoE grinding, and while many people feel that AoE is a Shaman’s weak point, I merely embrace what tools we do have and put them to use.

You do get more totems that what I’m covering here, but I’m going to point out the ones that you’ll actually use as Enhancement.

Earth TotemsEarthbind Totem: A 45 second totem that slows enemies within 10 yards by 50%.Stoneclaw Totem: A 15 second totem that taunts creatures in an 8 yard radius and provides a damage absorbing shield to your other totems. Enemies attacking it have a 50% chance of being stunned for 3 seconds.Strength of Earth Totem: A 5 minute totem increasing Strength and Agility.Tremor Totem: A 5 minute totem that removes Fear, Charm and Sleep effects within 30 yards.

Earthbind is something I use a lot in PvP (obviously), but it’s also great for when you need to run away or when you’re kiting. Keep it handy, but it’s not your default Earth totem. Stoneclaw is great for setting up your initial AoE pulls, for when you accidentally pull multiple mobs, of when you need to pull higher level mobs off of you. If you use the glyph that goes with it, Stoneclaw becomes one of the most important totems for you when soloing (see glyph section below). Strength of Earth is your default earth totem providing you with a big DPS boost by increasing both your Strength and Agility. Tremor totem is more situational. It has obvious use in PvP, but it’s also good for some questing areas or dungeons.

Fire TotemsSearing Totem: A 40 second totem that repeatedly attacks an enemy within 20 yards with Fire damage.Magma Totem: A 20 second totem that deals Fire damage to creatures within 8 yards every 2 seconds.Flametongue Totem: A 5 minute totem that increases Spell Damage and healing.

Air TotemsGrounding Totem: A 45 second totem that redirects to itself one harmful spell cast at you or your party, destroying itself as it does so.

Totem-Related SpellsCall of Elements: Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem bar.Totemic Recall: Dispels all of your active totems, restoring 25% of their mana costs to you.

You get both of these spells at level 30, allowing you to drop (up to) all four of your totems with a single click instead of casting each on individually with CoE, or destroying your totems after using them to restore 25% of their mana cost with TR. Totem management becomes a lot simpler, but be careful not to overuse your totems with this and waste your mana. Always “eat” your totems with Totemic Recall, but don’t overuse CoE.

During your first 10 levels there’s really nothing to it. You’re sort of a caster but sort of melee. If I’m feeling especially caster-like then I’ll LBolt things to death just to do it, if I’m feeling melee-like then I’ll just bash things in the face. After I get Earth Shock I tend to just leave LBolt out of the rotation for the most part and just run in with Earth Shock, Auto-Attack, and finish off with another Shock if for some reason they aren’t already dead yet.

Make sure you do your Shaman quest at level 4 to get your first totem, Stoneskin. You aren’t going to use the stupid thing while questing, but at least you’ll have it for later in case you want to give your tank more armor in a dungeon or something. And since it is a quest it’s basically free experience that most other classes don’t get at that level.

If you don’t have access to BoA weapons, but are willing to spend a little extra coin in the AH, then I suggest you get a Severing Axe which you’ll usually find for less than 1g. It comes with a random enchant, so the ones to look for are (of Power, of Agility, of Strength, of the Tiger).

Rotation-wise you’re not going to do much different than what you have been. I personally stop bothering with Lighting Bolt for the most part during these levels, but that’s because I’m a toon-twinking fool and always have great weapons with good enchants on them.

At level 10 you get a quest to go get your Fire Totem. For Alliance it’s a somewhat annoying back and forth trip across the Draenei starting area, but overall it’s not too bad and it’s actually pretty easy. For Horde it’s an annoying trip into the Barrens to get specific items to drop that have a bad drop rate.

Do this quest as early as you can because Fire is the totem that will benefit you the most during your leveling by adding to your DPS.

Again, if you don’t have a BoA weapon and you haven’t gotten anything good from dungeons or questing then you can look for weapons on the Auction House. The more expensive leveling weapon (usually 15-75g) is Boahn’s Fang, or you can save a little gold by looking for a Certain Green Items with random, or base, enchants that provide Agility, Strength, Attack Power, or a combination of them.

We don’t have any of our special attacks from our talent tree yet, instead we’ve just been buffing up our melee abilities. As such we don’t see a lot of change yet in our “rotation”. Start with Flame Shock to get a DoT going, bash them in the face while you wait for shocks to cooldown, and then Earth Shock to finish them off if they’re not already dead.

[UPDATE: At level 20 you get the quest to get your Water Totem. It’s going to provide you with healing and mana regen throughout the rest of your days so you’ll want to get it. Head back to your race’s main city to get the quest started. The water totem isn’t hard, but it’s a lot of traveling around, so be prepared for it.

At level 30 you get the quest for your final totem, Air. The quest to get this one is pretty simple. I think Blizzard sort of ran out of ideas when it came time to quest out the Air totem so they just threw something together for you and send you on your way. Air is your source of Haste for the most part, though it does have other useful tools as well such as the Grounding Totem which redirects a harmful spell from you to itself.]

Once you reach level 30 and you start using Windfury I tend to lay off of Flame Shock and go for Earth Shock instead for the higher burst damage. When Windfury procs whatever it is you’re hitting is probably going to die. As such I prefer getting a big burst to start with to try to take them down with the melee attacks, and then use Earth Shock again once it’s off of cooldown if necessary.

After you get Windfury it’s time to get serious about weapon selection. When you’re dealing with a big two-handed weapon you want to go with the slowest one you can find, with the highest minimum and maximum damage you can find, so that you can maximize your Windfury damage.

Enhancement Shaman Tactics
There are a few different ways that you can play your Shaman as Enhancement, and each one involves different amounts of spell use and/or totem use. I personally have three different approaches to playing my Shaman.

Single Target, No Totems: This is probably my most common in which I simply rush straight at a mob casting Flame Strike or Earth Strike as I move into melee range and then just bash them in the face until they’re dead. When the mob drops you loot the corpse and then move on to the next target and just bring them down one at a time like that. In lower levels and especially in solo play you’re going to find that most of your totems are a waste of time and mana because of the fact that they buff an area rather than an individual. So while a class such as a Paladin can give themselves an Attack Power buff that lasts for 10-30 minutes, ours only lasts until we move out of range.

For this I almost always stick with Lightning Shield unless I’m casting so frequently that I need to switch to Water Shield for the mana regen.

Single Target, Totem-Assisted: This is one I do when I’m fighting higher level mobs, when I’m doing a “Kill X of Y-mobs” quest, or when I just want to kill more things faster. Typically this involves dropping a Strength of Earth Totem to increase my melee abilities, or dropping a Magma/Searing Totem for extra damage and use of Fire Nova if necessary. With the “Kill X of Y-mobs” quests if I can find a place that has 6 or more of the mobs that I need then I’ll drop one of each type of totem, whichever benefits me the most. Generally that ends up being Strength of Earth, Flametounge, and Mana Spring totems.

I will set my totems and then attack the first mob as I would any other, starting with Flame Shock and following it up with melee attacks until dead, then pulling a second mob near my totems and repeating that process over and over to take as much advantage of my totems’ 5 minute duration as possible before moving on to the next area.

Since I’m using totems and chain pulling mobs one after the other I tend to run with Water Shield when doing this rather than Lightning Shield since I use more mana due to less downtime between mobs to regenerate.

Mana-Intensive AoE: Up to level 20 this is going to involve setting up your totems (Strength of Earth, Mana Spring, and Magma), keeping your Water Shield up at all times for the mana regen, using Flame Nova every time it comes off of cooldown, and recasting Magma every time it wears off. If you’re good on mana then you can switch to Lightning Shield for extra damage, but you’re probably better off with Water for the extra mana.

If you have access to the Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem it will provide you with a damage-absorbing shield for 15 seconds after dropping that totem. If you do have this glyph then my personal preference for doing AoE pulls is to use either your mount or Ghost Wolf form to body pull three or more mobs, drop Stoneclaw Totem to have it taunt and draw agro off of you, then drop Mana Spring, then Magma, and then Strength of Earth Totem. Follow that up with Fire Nova, then cast Flame Shock on your first target and take the mobs down one at a time.

If you want to kill them faster then use Flame Shock on the individual targets each time its cooldown is up so that the DoT will tick longer and on multiple mobs, but keep your melee focused on a single target until it’s dead. If you want to bring them down one at a time then Flame Shock first and then Earth Shock until they’re dead.

Windfury Weapon: How to (Ab)Use It
I’m not going to get into the actual formula here because that’s not what I do here. However, it’s important to know what the key numbers are in a weapon in order to find out whether one weapon is an upgrade over another, or not. There are three key numbers when deciding which weapon to use when running as Enhancement: Minimum Damage, Maximum Damage, and Weapon Speed.

When calculating how much damage your Windfury procs will do, the game plugs your min/max damage into a formula to get the base damage range (x damage to y damage) while taking in the AP buff of Windfury and adding it in, essentially calculating a new min/max damage for Windfury. The Weapon Speed is the key to how much damage you end up with though, because it’s the multiplier.

So let’s say your minimum weapon damage is 20 and your maximum weapon damage 60 with a 2.5 speed weapon. Windfury generates a number between the min and max damage and then multiplies it by the weapon speed for the damage (that’s not technically true, I’m just trying to express the concept). So if it picks the number 40 (between 20 and 60) it will then multiply it by 2.5 to deal 40 x 2.5 = 100 damage. If you have the same min and max damage, but on a weapon with 4.0 speed (slowest in the game) then you instead get 40 x 4 = 160 damage. If you’re using a higher damage weapon and your random number for damage happens to be 250 then the difference between the two speeds is 250×2.5=625 damage versus 250×4.0=1000 damage, so you can see how important weapon speed and weapon damage is.

Before duel wielding you want the slowest weapon you can find for the largest Windfury hits possible. Anything that’s 3.0 or slower should work for you at this point, though the closer you get to 4.0 the harder you’ll hit. When you’re using Windfury, whether it’s for a two-hander or for duel wielding after 40, never go faster than 2.6 weapon speed if you can help it or else not only are you gimping your WF damage but you’re also robbing yourself of some WF procs because it has a 3 second internal cooldown. Prior to duel wielding I prefer a two-hander that’s no faster than 3.5 because I really enjoy bashing things in the face for more health than they have in the first place.

Talent Points and Glyphs

Ancestral Knowledge 5/5: Increases your Intellect by 10%.Improved Ghost Wolf 2/2: Reduces the cast time of your Ghost Wolf spell by 2 seconds.Thundering Strikes 3/5: Improves your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 3%.Shamanistic Focus 1/1: Reduces the cost of your Shock spells by 45%.Elemental Weapons 2/3: Increases the damage caused by your Windfury Weapon effect by 40%, increases the spell damage of your Flametongue Weapon by 30%, and increases the bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon by 30%.Thundering Strikes +2 (5/5): Improves your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 5%.Flurry 5/5: Increaes your attack speed by 25% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike.Spirit Weapons 1/1: Gives a chance to parry enemy melee attacks and reduces all threat generated by 30%.

Ancestral Knowledge serves multiple purposes. First it gives you more mana which is great since without mana you suck, second it increases your spell power and spell crit which helps your Shock damage, and third here in three more levels you’re going to be able to add 100% of your Intellect to your Attack Power so another 10% is sweet.

Major GlyphsGlyph of Windfury Weapon: Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. [Requires level 30]Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.Glyph of Fire Nova: Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Nova spell by 3 seconds.

For your first glyph my personal suggestion is Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem because that damage shield is amazing. It’s great for PvE and it’s a must have for PvP. I rocked the Glyph of Fire Nova for a while and really liked being able to use Nova more often, but in the long run I felt the increased DPS wasn’t really worth the extra downtime from having to restore mana or that having its cooldown faster didn’t actually speed things up since mobs were usually dead before it mattered. Lightning Shield is a solid boost to your kill speed when you’re solo, but if you plan on grouping it sucks since you’re not going to be hit very often.

Once you hit level 30 the Glyph of Windfury Weapon is an absolute must. Windfury is the whole reason you play Enhancement in the first place. That 2% isn’t a huge number, but when the difference between a WF attack and a non-WF attack is like the difference between having a Tauren stomp on your face and a Gnome step on your toe, you want that 2%.

I don’t like the Ghost Wolf glyph, though I love the spell, because we can both actively (healing spells) and passively (healing stream totem) heal ourselves at any time. Use it if you’re a twink, otherwise I suggest you skip it unless you find it for less than 1g on the AH or can make it yourself. I only mention it because it’s your only option prior to level 20. Water Walking is my personal choice for our first minor slot since I’m a big fan of extra mobility and hate wasted bag slots. If you don’t care about that then go for Water Shield instead so that you can spend less time reapplying the shield when your questing. Renewed Life is another bag slot saver, but it’s for a spell you’ll be using for the rest of your career so you might as well grab it.

Personal Preference: GW at 16 if you’re twinking (otherwise ignore it), Water Walking at 20 or Renewed Life at 30.

Macro Suggestions
Oddly enough I don’t use a whole lot of macros for my Shaman even though they probably deserve more macros than almost any other class.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Lightning Bolt

I use this same macro for Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Wind Shear and every other attack I ever get. You’ve seen me post a version of this macro on almost every class guide I’ve written, and it’s on every one for a reason. It’s all about simplification and saving time/effort, even if it’s only one keystroke or one button press at a time.

This one is your one-button travel macro. If you’re not moving it will first try to cast your flying mount (if you have one and can fly where you are), if you don’t have one or can’t summon it then it will summon your ground mount (if you have one and can ride it), and failing that it will cast Ghost Wolf if you’re able (can’t be used in doors).

The exclamation point (!) before Ghost Wolf will stop the macro from activating if you already have Ghost Wolf active, so you won’t break the spell if you press the button a second time unless you use it to summon a mount. You can also put the (!) in front of your mount names if you don’t want the macro to dismount you. You may also want to replace that last line with /cast [modifer:nomounted] !Ghost Wolf so that activating the macro will not dismount you and cast Ghost Wolf while you’re mounted.

I personally love dismounting by turning into a Ghost Wolf, chasing down my target on all fours, and then popping out of GW with a Shock following by an axe (and hopefully a Windfury proc) to the face. I’m just a goofy cheeseball like that sometimes. It’s one of those pseudo-roleplaying things that I do because I like to do it which really provides no in-game benefit to me at all other than wasting my mana, but it makes me enjoy the experience more so I do it anyway.

I made this macro a long time ago for a Shaman who happened to be an Inscriptionist. If you’re not an Inscriptionist, then delete the Scroll of Recall line since you’ll never be able to use one. Without the SoR line this macro will cast Astral Recall if it’s not on cooldown, otherwise it will use your Hearthstone.

Some people prefer more direct control of it, so if that’s what you want then the second option

If you do a lot of travelling all around the world (or happen to be used to playing a Mage like I am), then it’s always better to use your short cooldowns first so that you get more overall use out of them if you’re bouncing all over the place. Just trust me on this one.

Gearing Up: Guidelines and Suggestions
If you’re going to rock an Enhancement build then early on you want to shoot for things that are going to increase your Attack Power, which will be Strength and Agility (both at 1:1 ratio for AP). I prefer going for Agility over Strength because Agi is going to give you melee Crit as well while the AP value is the same for the two stats. Any gear you find that’s “of the Tiger” is great as it will provide both Strength and Agility increases, though you will also make good use of “of Power” items which add higher values of straight AP.

You also make use of Spell Power and Intellect since shamans are a hybrid melee/caster class. Intellect will become more important to you a bit later when you’re able to add your Intellect to your AP as well, but we’re not there just yet so for now take it if you find it but don’t bother focusing on it.

If you’re willing to do a little PvP on your Shaman then you can do just a couple of runs in Warsong Gulch between level 10-20 for a great neck piece that proves both Agility and Stamina that costs a dinky 100 Honor. I ran several BG’s to get an average amount of honor per fight and after averaging them together it came out to be about 46 Honor per battle, so anywhere from 92 to 138 Honor per hour depending on how fast the matches go and how long the queue times are. After level 20 you can do a few runs in Arathi Basin if you’re still in a PvP mood and get both a Belt and Boots upgrade for 100 Honor each that provide excellent stats as well.

As far as instances go there are a few good pieces here and there that are solid, and others that are especially good. I strongly suggest you run some randoms once you get to level 15 and try to get your hands on a good cloak in particular. There are several upgrades that you can get from the Satchel of Helpful Goods that will last you for 10 or more levels. Items you’re looking for in particular from the satchel form level 15-25 include:

You’re looking for the “of the Bandit” gear in particular, but the others are good choices as well. Some of the other items I didn’t list are good for you as well, and you may consider holding onto some of the more caster-oriented items in case you find yourself in queue as a Healer. If you aren’t going to queue to heal at all and refuse to be a healer then you can ignore that bit of advice of course.

After level 25 the Random queues will drop a different version of the Satchel of Helpful Goods which will reward you with necklaces or gloves instead. (Protip: If you happen to be an enchanter you may want to consider selling these necklaces that aren’t upgrades rather than disenchanting them as they sell rather high to vendors for their level.)

Razorfen Kraul has a couple of really big upgrades you’ll want to watch out for, particularly Ferine Leggings which look horrid but offer huge melee stats, and Corpsemaker which lives up to its name nicely. You also may want to grab the Tusken Helm which you can’t use until level 40 because it’s mail, but if no other mail wearers want it then it’s 24 AP waiting for you right when you hit level 40. If you only get one item from here, the Leggings are some of the best you’ll find for a while.

Gnomeregan is the last one we’ll discuss in this portion. If you still need a decent weapon then Thermaplugg’s Left Arm is a solid option even if it is a bit rarer on the drop list. While not exactly in line with the stats we’re looking for, the Electromagnetic Gigaflux Reactivator can lay some serious hurt down for you, has great +Int, and even though it looks ridiculous it’s hard to find head gear this early so it’s a great choice. There’s also the Charged Gear ring which drops with a random enchant on it. You’re looking for “of the Tiger”, “of Agility”, “of the Monkey”, “of the Falcon”, “of the Boar”, “of the Bear”, “of Strength”, or possibly “of Intellect”. Tiger and Agility are the big ones.

There are several upgrades to be found in Scarlet Monastery as well, but I’ll leave those for the next guide since at 30 you’ll just barely be getting into SM country and not particularly the parts you’ll find upgrades in.

Like this:

I focused a lot of my game time this weekend on leveling my Orc Shaman, Belgawrath. Over half of his quest log was filled with quests that are done in instances ranging from Wailing Caverns to Scarlet Monastery. Since I was already level 31, I decided that Wailing Caverns was not worth my time and just dropped them instead.

Just as I prepared to delete the quests for Razorfen Kraul as well, I saw an LFG message asking for a healer for RFK. I don’t have a single point in the Restoration tree, and I haven’t done any real healing other than my own, but since I had the quest and they were ready to go I went ahead and offered my services. They quickly grabbed me up as apparently they had been looking for a healer for quite a while, so off I went to RFK.

Razorfen Kraul
The rest of the group was made of characters in their low 20’s except for the 29 Warrior who was tanking for us. The warrior was the only one high enough to be summoned by the stone. Since a lot of warrior gear looks pretty cool I like to inspect warriors and have a look at what gear they are actually using. The tank was wearing BoA shoulders and a BoA weapon though I do not remember which one it was now. The rest was mostly green drops but he did have a couple of enchants on there so I assumed he knew what he was doing.

After the third pull I gave up on just sitting in the background to heal and proceeded to show the rest of the group how a real dps class does damage and then threw the heals around when needed. Healing wasn’t hard, but everyone was pulling agro all over the place so I had to heal pretty much everyone but myself. It went in little spurts though where healing was needed everywhere one second and then nobody needed it the next.

After the fifth pull I noticed a dangerous trend and started asking questions. We’ll just call this tank Cuddlebear.
“Cuddlebear, how many instances have you tanked before?” (Answer: 8 or 9)
“Cuddlebear, why do you keep losing agro? Do you know what taunts are?” (Answers: I don’t know. No?)
“Cuddlebear, why aren’t you using Thunder Clap?” (Answer: )
“Cuddlebear, why are you doing nothing by auto-attacks?” (Answer: )
“Cuddlebear, why do you keep moving all over the place for no reason?” (Answer: )

So, after figuring out that this tank has no idea what he’s doing, I explained to him how a warrior tank works at his level. And to my surprise, he still can’t hold agro on anything at all. And I’m not talking about holding it against me and my comparatively epic dps, I’m talking about the mage who cast a single Frostbolt and pulled the tank’s main target. To give the guy some bit of credit, there was another dps warrior in there that was using Thunder Clap and pulling some of the mobs off of him.

Since he stopped replying to my questions, which I can understand if he felt like I was attacking him with the questioning, I decided I would go ahead and tank the instance in addition to the healing and dps I was already doing. I was already the strongest dps, obviously, and I was the only one in the instance that even had the option of healing, but I was pretty sure I could tank better than the warrior, so that’s what I did.

I just went ahead and beat the snot out of everything that came at us, threw down some Stoneclaw, Healing Stream, and Magma Totems and went to town owning face with my mace. When people got low on hit points I stopped what I was doing to heal them instead. When someone pulled agro away and started taking too much damage I went ahead and switched targets to get agro or kill the mob.

So, for RFK I did my usual job of dps, while filling the necessary role of healing, and also tanking 80% of the instance as well. Sorry Mr. Cuddlebear, but you just got out-tanked by a leather wearing class that has the lowest hit points in the game. Cuddlebear (Orc Warrior), I can do anything better than you.

Scarlet Monastery
It took quite a while for some reason, but I did eventually find a group that was willing to run through SM: Library and Armory. We had a 38 Warlock who actually managed to out-dps me a few times, and a 38 Paladin who came to tank for us but bailed after the first boss in Library. The rest of the group were low 30’s, with me at 33.

After the paladin bailed the 29 Warrior (not Cuddlebear from RFK) offered to tank for us and since he used the Equipment Manager to switch to his tanking gear I was actually a little impressed that he might have an idea of what he was doing. Luckily, he actually did a great job even though he was a bit low level. We had a druid doing the healing and though I was strictly dps I did jump in several times to help him heal when the…less than intelligent, rogue wanted to “peek into the next room” and by so doing pulled way more mobs than we wanted.

I have to assume that the rogue was otherwise occupied with something else because (s)he constantly went into the wrong room or pulled mobs from who knows where, or just whatever could possibly be done to screw things up. Luckily the rest of us actually melded surprisingly well and easily made up for the rogue’s mistakes.

The tank was good at what he did, but he was also having connection issues, so when the rogue came running in with another group of mobs chomping at her heals, I had to switch over to being an off-tank and steal the mobs from her. Luckily she was smart enough to not build up any agro when she pulled the groups, so my totems, shocks, and attacks were enough to gather them all to me and chew them down. We didn’t want to lose the tank while he was dc’ed, so we kept the druid healing him and I just healed myself when I needed it.

The druid was pretty good on heals for the most part, but I think he was pretty new to it. When things got hairy, I dropped the dps gig and went pseudo-resto instead. When things were cool the druid worked just fine, but when extra mobs were pulled he fell apart. When it comes to healing in a pinch, Mr. Resto Druid, I can do anything better than you.

The warlock’s blueberry was supposed to be our off-tank, but he couldn’t match me for holding agro so we sent him back to the void for the Felhound instead. Yes Mr. Voidwalker, I can do anything better than you. The Felhound’s Fel Intellect buff is my new best friend though. With Mental Dexterity I get attack power from my Intellect, and the boost this little guy was giving me sent my windfury crits up another 200 damage.

After clearing Library the tank got dc’ed and never came back, so I had a DK in the guild come and run us through the rest of it instead. Got a few decent gear upgrades, but mostly mail armor I can’t wear until 40 anyway.

Useful ToolsGlyph of Stoneclaw Totem
One thing I want to share that really helped me out in my “tanking” as a shaman, was the Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem. When you use the totem the glyph makes a protective bubble pop up around you that absorbs damage. This was critical at times when I had 4 or more mobs on me and really needed to heal. I dropped the totem for the sake of getting the bubble. The threat generation is nice if you haven’t built up threat on the mobs around you, but the main thing was that bubble.

When the bubble is up I have time to let my Healing Wave cast, and that’s usually enough by itself to heal about 50-60% of my overall health in one cast. I usually cast my healing spells on myself in a reactive manner, only using them when I drop below 40% in health. I don’t cast them when things just start to look a little bad, I wait until I get to the point death is soon to follow if something doesn’t happen pretty fast.

Since my Shaman is an Inscriptionist (no, I don’t like calling myself a “scribe”), I went ahead and just made the glyph myself to try it out, knowing that I could just as easily make a different glyph to replace it in all of 3 seconds if I needed to. As it turns out, it’s extremely useful in leveling and questing as well as in instances where you have to pick up the slack for the other players.